I was a handyman in an office building across from Penn Station for two entire summers while I was still in school and the summer after. I had to wear a big, gray jumpsuit kind of thing that had the name of the company in a big patch on my chest, and I was sent to fix things and didn't know what I was doing.

My career hadn't rocketed to the top of anything, but I've worked consistently and done things I've loved.

Honestly, I wish I'd known just how hard it is and how competitive the acting world is. I took my time; I went at my own pace. That's been helpful over the years, but also, I didn't quite realize how incredible everyone else was going to be: the level of competition and everyone's skill.

I grew up with the movies of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Judy Garland - these are the kinds of shows and the kinds of numbers in shows that I dreamed of being in and doing when I was a kid.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater.

Hollywood is a double feeling. Love and hate. With a talented film director, I cannot resist. They are such charming and intelligent people. But each time, it is very difficult to deal with other people. I have to satisfy other people. The director or the producer. Not me. I have to satisfy myself. But then I have to deliver my music.

My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative.